


Bramble

by paperiuni



Series: Girls of Thorns and Roses [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Background Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Canon Divergence of the Lake Lyn Trip, Character Study, Episode: s02e16 Day of Atonement, F/F, First Dates, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gratuitous Worldbuilding, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Kissing in the Snow, Lightwood Siblings Feels, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: She is Isabelle Lightwood, and she does not fall apart. Not even over a firestorm of a girl blazing her merry way through her life as she knows it.Izzy has battled her demons, returned to normal—and kissed the girl. That last part wasnotplanned. Still, it could be the start of a beautiful romance, if she and Clary can only manage to meet on common ground.
Relationships: Alec Lightwood & Isabelle Lightwood, Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood, Isabelle Lightwood & Jace Wayland
Series: Girls of Thorns and Roses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909066
Comments: 26
Kudos: 50
Collections: Women of Shadowhunters





	Bramble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intezaarlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intezaarlily/gifts).



> For Lily, who kept telling me she wanted this story for almost two years. I hope it is worth the wait. <3333
> 
> Further shout-outs to Zia, for being as excited about the Alec & Izzy bits as the Clary x Izzy; to Joan, _sine qua non_ ; and to Mindy, who renewed my faith in this story.
> 
> *
> 
> Rejected title: "Isabelle Lightwood's Salty Pansexual Awakening"
> 
> This is a direct sequel to _[Pinion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054477)_ , and will make much more sense if you read that story first. It's a little under 5,000 words <3
> 
> As ever, we're in the AU where the show happens over at least a year, because I can't deal with the timeline. This fic takes place after episode 2.14 and contains some of the events of 2.15 and 2.16 (with a twist).
> 
> Once upon a time, there was a Get Your Words Out (@gywo on twitter) prompt that said: _Write a story with a snowflake, a sled, a hand-written note, and a constellation._
> 
> So I did, and then made it femslash.
> 
> *
> 
>  **Content Notes** : This story references Izzy's yin fen addiction, but it's not a major element.

_But you like the taste of danger_ _  
_ _It shines like sugar on your lips_ _  
_ _And you like to stand in the line of fire_ _  
_ _Just to show you can shoot straight from your hip_

 _There must be a thousand things you would die for_ _  
_ _I can hardly think of two_  
_But not everything is better spoken aloud_ _  
Not when I'm talking to you_

— Indigo Girls, 'Mystery'

*

Isabelle has a problem. Like a not insignificant number of her problems, it starts with a kiss.

This is not a drink-spurred smooch on the dance floor in Pandemonium, or a rebellious lip-lock with a dashing Downworlder to spite her parents. She's had her share of those, and she knows how to resolve them. They are, for the most part, fun and games.

She can't sweep this one under the rug. Or blame it on too many unearthly Seelie cocktails.

This kiss happens on the floor of Clary's room in the Institute. Her bed is covered in drawings that she just showed to Izzy in a very bare-your-soul kind of move. She puts her face on Izzy's with total Clary-esque candor, and it's the strangest, sweetest kiss Izzy has ever had.

It's also the decisive piece of evidence Izzy needs. It cements that the way her stomach pitches in Clary's presence is more than the idle knowledge that Clary is smoking hot. She's always noticed pretty girls; she's also always downplayed it as an aesthetic appreciation. Hindsight is a pain in the butt.

She's been noticing Clary. Thinking about her. In terms you should not be thinking about your brother's near miss of a girlfriend. Clary and Jace did finally untangle the issue of their purported siblinghood—no relation, straight from the mouth of the evil foster father toting the Soul-Sword. Izzy should've thrown them a party.

Except not really. Jace would've thrown her into the wall of the training hall for her trouble. Not long ago, it would've been the kind of stupid stunt she'd pull on Jace to rile him up, and he'd have laughed it off in the spirit of _their_ siblinghood.

Now, he's home from his brief gig as the prodigal son, and Izzy knows better than to provoke him. Guess they've both grown up.

Jace's bruised feelings are not the only hurdle she must clear.

While Jace was out getting his mope on, Clary had her sweet but doomed stint of dating Simon. It ended in drama in the Seelie Realm, which figures. For the next week, Izzy went between Clary and Jace, consoling the former and bridling the latter before he misstepped with the stricken Clary and ended up eating crow. It gave her routine some nice variety alongside therapy groups, actual shadowhunting duties, and making Alec stop coddling her after her return to active duty.

Alec doesn't always grasp that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at once. Those are: one, she has an addiction; two, it's under control.

Recovery is and could well remain rocky, but the last thing she wants is to be handled with kid gloves by her overbearing—and beloved—elder brother. Alec has the whole Institute to shepherd. _I'm a big girl_ , she tells him, all airy cheekiness. _And you have bigger fish to fry._

It's better for them both. Their teenaged trio with Jace can't hold fast against the rest of the world forever. Alec is in love and going up in his career, since no one in Alicante has yet tried to reverse Jace's blatantly nepotistic move of handing the Institute over to him. That could be because they can't find anyone more qualified. Even when Alec is dating a dastardly Downworlder, and a warlock to boot.

More likely, they're saving Alec's perceived indiscretions to dangle them over his head in an opportune moment. Izzy doesn't think he _really_ features at the top of the Council's list of favorite local Institute management.

He's happy, though. Happier than she's ever seen him. Magnus is good for him, so the second some Clave asshole tries to use Alec's relationship as blackmail material, they'll have Izzy to contend with.

In contrast: she used to hook up with Downworlders as an act of defiance. It was at once thrilling and ultimately safe. She always chose partners she couldn't possibly bring to meet her parents. Mom would wrinkle her nose, Dad would mumble something half-reproachful, but as long as her relationships fell outside their hair-thin margin of _acceptable_ , she could shrug off their demands. It'd be worse if she made eyes at someone they could _consider._

And now, she's had one fragile and earth-shaking talk with her mother that didn't end in screaming and slammed doors. Izzy told her about the yin fen, and of all possible outcomes, her mother cried and hugged her. As weird as it is, they've taken a step toward mutual understanding.

The Angel only knows what would happen if she upset that apple cart with, _Mom, I think you have a second child who isn't straight._

Only there is no _I think_ about it. Clary kisses her and the world turns a somersault around them. When she's done Izzy leans after her for more, hungry and elated, and something sings in her, louder than the surprise.

Then, as they're giggly and breathless, draped over one another on the floor, she comes back to reality. She makes an excuse about having to go on shift and asks, "Can I take a minute?"

Clary, who is more emotionally perceptive than people give her credit for, says, "Of course. It's not that simple for you, is it? Just let me know."

"It's... it's not that complicated, either. I've just never—" Oh, the gnarly moment when you have to admit you're new and clueless about something. She's always hated it.

"Modeled for a bright new name of the Shadow World art scene?" Clary glances at the drawing on her bed, the one that is and isn't of Izzy, the one that engendered the entire kiss. The sight of it makes her heart beat faster.

"Yeah, that. I'll see you for sparring tomorrow, though, right?"

"You're the boss." There's a new, toe-curling slant to Clary's smile. "That is, try and stop me."

"Okay." Izzy kisses her one more time—one for the road—and absolutely does not flee her flirty little wave goodbye into the corridor.

She spends her mind-numbing midnight watch reliving those three kisses. The sense memory of them, the sweet heat of Clary's mouth, hounds her the next day, through breakfast and training and paperwork.

Calling it a problem beggars the scale of the issue. Izzy has a disaster on her hands, and its name is Clary Fairchild.

*

An hour before Izzy is due in the training hall for her weekly meeting with Clary, her phone warbles with an urgent message from Alicante R&D.

Valentine Morgenstern is behind bars in the Institute sub-cells. It would be too much to ask that his demonic experiments would just quietly fade away. The Helsinki Institute has found another specimen of the engineered possessing demon Valentine let loose in New York. They've alerted Alicante to a possible pattern, and Alicante needs what data Izzy has on it.

Telling Clary that there's another demon like the one that killed her mother seems like a terrible idea. Especially when Clary is just starting to hold her head up through the grief. She's sleeping better and letting casual happiness surprise her again.

The last thing Izzy wants is to dampen her delicate contentment. Rather, she'd like to be a _source_ of it, no matter how thorny that idea is in turn.

She omits the details from her apologetic text to Clary.

She dashes off the message and spends the rest of her evening buried in the lab databases and waging an email war with a sleepless science team half the world away.

At three a.m., she stops behind Clary's door on her way to bed. It's not absurdly late by Institute standards. The room is empty, the bed made, and Clary's good winter boots are missing from her gear rack. Feeling more than half guilty, Izzy checks the mission roster: Clary's gone on a field mission to Jersey City, no estimated return time.

Izzy has always encouraged her to push herself. She's with Roseworth, a veteran officer—Izzy double-checks this with another flash of weird shame, like she's snooping on something way more private than assignment information. Clary is in good hands. Izzy should be proud; her lessons are paying off. Her brain still whirling, she takes herself to bed, only to toss and turn for the better part of the night.

By bleary mid-afternoon, Clary's team is still not back. Izzy caves and sends her a solitary _everything ok?_ query, then forces herself back to her research.

Clary texts back as Izzy is shoveling a hasty dinner in her mouth, perched at the end of a mess table next to her phone _only_ because Alicante might return her latest email.

 _snafu,_ Clary's message says, _can't talk longer, sorry._ A string of heart emojis trails this somewhat cryptic sitrep.

Izzy scrolls up through the message log. Clary's effusive overuse of emojis alternates with Izzy's pithier messages. Photos speckle their chatter, mostly taken by Clary: her making a face at the camera; an interesting piece of architecture she wanted to record; a new kind of latte she found for Izzy to try. Her complaint of _I'm so bored of this stakeout, can the demons just come out and eat me now_ has been answered with _eyes out front, soldier. hot shower and hot chocolate when you get back._

They talk so much, all the time. Where are all of Izzy's words all of sudden?

 _don't do anything I wouldn't do_ , she types up, then adds one red heart. Her color. Is it flirty, when it never was before?

Back in the lab, she keeps fidgeting and pacing until she nearly knocks over a microscope. She needs to vent. Old instinct suggests a short skirt and a dose of her patented charm aimed at a handsome stranger.

She finds Jace instead, slinking in his door like the ghost of frustrations all too present. "Come on. Training hall's empty, and I need somebody who won't just fold and cry for mercy five minutes in."

"You mean you need your ass handed to you." He closes his book, raps his fingers on the cover, and maybe she isn't the only one whose skin doesn't seem to fit on right.

"In your dreams, Lightwood," she says, like she did once, long ago, the first time Jace saved her on an illicit night hunt.

He'd been with them for two, three years. She'd never taken to him the same way Alec had, more suspicious of this trespasser in her tightly circumscribed world, but they had one thing in common: a reckless, joyful hunger to see how much farther they could go.

That led them down a forbidden subway tunnel and to a nest of Croucher demons. Izzy came out of the scuffle with a bleeding forehead and a wrenched knee. Braced on a wall, she warded off the little monsters with her whip while Jace dispatched them one by one.

 _You gonna faint?_ he asked, with wobbly bravado, once it was over.

 _In your dreams,_ she hissed, and then, _Lightwood._ In that moment, he was her brother in a way Alec, steadfast and caring, a rock for her to lean on, could never quite be.

Jace doesn't press her for reasons. He just hands her ass to her, though she goes kicking and screaming to her defeat. The bout wears her out enough that she can stagger into the shower, then into bed, and pitch headfirst into sleep.

Because her subconscious is, as has been established, a bitch, she dreams of Clary. Her brain has a rough template of what it's like to kiss Clary—amazing, thrilling, tempting—and no qualms about serving her a whole catalog of vivid images. She gasps awake, shivering and aching, in her knotted sheets.

She left the curtains open. The harsh light of day reveals her phone blinking with a fresh notification.

 _home tonight_ , Clary reports. _miss you._

Izzy smiles down at the screen. Her throat seems to close.

*

"Buck up," Izzy tells her warped reflection in the painted glass window. "You can do this."

She has stood Clary up not once but twice. The first time she had the mostly legitimate excuse of her Alicante colleagues needing her expertise.

The second came in the form of Clary asking if she had time for coffee now that Clary was back. It sent a shot of undiluted panic up Izzy's spine. She muddled through an answer that amounted to _how about training tomorrow, instead?_

The Angel help her, but she's a mess. She's supposed to be the Lightwood who keeps it together. (Alec is the uncrowned champion of _internalizing_ , but that's not the same thing.) When she goes wild, it's for shits and giggles only.

She is Isabelle fucking Lightwood, and she does not fall apart. Not even over a firestorm of a girl blazing her merry way through her life as she knows it.

It was thinking like that that made her take Aldertree's offer. The yin fen was supposed to be a shortcut to her goal, a way to fulfill her childhood dream of meeting—being—an Iron Sister. She was meant to have it under control.

Her bracelet chatters against the stone windowsill. She can't hold her hand still.

"Good morning!" Clary troops in the door with bright-eyed audacity.

Izzy turns like her heart did not just skip a beat. Her fingers make a tight, bloodless fist at her side. "Hey. Catch!"

Clary snags the fighting stick Izzy throws to her out of the air. Her heather gray tank top shows off the sleek muscle that now layers her arms, though her slim frame is unlikely to fill out much. Izzy has been running her through moves that best exploit her small size and quickening reflexes. "Straight to business, huh?"

"We did agree you were gonna show up ready to go." Izzy clicks her tongue. "Since I have a couple of other jobs around here, besides being your personal trainer slash Shadow World life coach."

"Yes, ma'am," Clary says, a little low, like she is not at all opposed to Izzy bossing her around. "All work and no play it is."

Izzy draws breath, deep into her body and out again. This is the test. If she can spar with Clary, then there's one thing that remains the same. One constant to steady herself against, when Clary's cheeky comments—her mere presence—make her insides go hot and unsteady.

"Rumor has it," she says, "that you went up against Dahak demons in Jersey City and emerged victorious."

"More or less." Clary balances the stick on two fingers, her eyes tracking the wavering top of it. "Nobody warned me about the tentacles."

Laughter bursts out of Izzy before she can rein it in. "Sorry, sorry, it's just—"

"Wide open to the _worst_ interpretation?" A crack opens in Izzy's tension as Clary fails to muffle her own giggle. "I tried to fight the first one like a thing on six legs, but it had two more tentacles it was not walking on."

"They can walk on any of those eight," Izzy says. "The theory about Dahaks is that they're always tapped into the Void. Even when they manifest, they're partially out of phase, which lets them move in unpredictable ways."

She draws her stele. Clary echoes the gesture, leaning in as Izzy extends her forearm. The ends of her ponytail brush Izzy's shoulder in prickling whispers of contact.

"Here's a trick of the trade." She wills her hands not to tremble. "When you're up against a Dahak, combine the grace and foresight runes. You don't need speed nearly as much as you need quick _reaction_ , and any hint as to where it's going to strike next."

Clary follows the strokes of her stele to commit the rune patterns to memory. The way her brows knit is regrettably adorable. It gives Izzy a stupid, stupid impulse to kiss her forehead.

At least it's a change from the double impulses of wanting to either back her up against the wall and make out with her, or drop the lesson and run.

"I thought foresight wasn't a combat rune." Clary's runes are crisp and clean, immaculate on the first try. The angels whisper new runes straight into her mind, so plain old Gray Book runes should hardly faze her.

"That's the conventional rule." Izzy brandishes a fighting stick in what she hopes is a sage manner. "But convention is for pawns. Context is for queens."

"Right." Intent sparkles in Clary's gaze. "Help me put this in context?"

Adrenaline jolts through Izzy in a welcome burst of clarity. She breaks the eye contact while she still can. "Whenever you're ready."

*

"I have a question," Clary says, in more of a gasp, sprawled on the floor of the training hall. The stone is nicely cool on Izzy's blossoming bruises.

"Can I answer in two-syllable words?"

"It might be a little weird. Just be honest with me."

For a brief spell, Izzy almost forgot the sword of Damocles that is the reply she still owes Clary, hanging over their every interaction since the kiss. It might be fair of Clary to press the issue by now. "Okay."

Instead of inquiring about their romantic status, Clary says, "How do you think I'm doing with the training? It's been half a year. Like, how fast am I supposed to learn? I'm nowhere near your level, but I get hits on you now and then."

"You fight demons in the field." That's a harsher and more accurate gauge.

"That too. Pretty sure I didn't advance this fast in judo class in early middle school—don't ask. Simon and I had a serious 'ninjas are cool' phase. Judo's not ninjutsu, but it was the only martial art Mom would let me try." Clary springs into a crouch, then onto her feet, limbering her legs.

Izzy sits up. "You're nephilim. Battle is what we're made for. I can't swear to it, but Ithuriel's blood could have something to do with how quickly you're improving."

"It sounds so... grim when you put it like that. This idea that Shadowhunters have one purpose in life." Shading her eyes, Clary stops to stare at a sword-wielding angel figure in the painted glass, shot through with shimmers of morning sunlight. "I've come this far. Can't fall behind now."

Clary's taken to demon-hunting with the same stubborn, scrappy courage that governs her attitude to mostly everything. Sometimes that blinds Izzy to the fact that she stepped into the Shadow World from the outside, from a sheltered mundane existence where the hidden horrors of the world could be safely folded between storybook covers and movie frames.

Isabelle has always known she is a warrior. She's fought for her individuality in the press of her divine duty, but there's no question of her abandoning that duty.

_This is what we're made for._

As the sun casts Clary in tinted gold, gleams on each stray bead of sweat and wild wisp of hair, that thought is easy, self-evident. She's bold and vibrant, flushed from the spar, somber with musing. It's not difficult to imagine a celestial hand in her design.

And Izzy wants her in a way that is wrong in the eyes of the Angel.

"You're doing great." She hopes the hollow ache that gapes in her chest doesn't resound in her voice. "Same time next week?"

Clary nods. If there's another question in the furrow of her brows, she doesn't voice it.

Izzy's teeth sink into her cheek, until she can taste the raw hint of blood under the dented flesh.

*

The next day, Jace leads out the team transporting Valentine to the Gard in Alicante. Overruling her protests, Alec does not put Izzy on the team.

 _I don't think you can't handle it,_ he says, with infuriating logic. _I need you in the lab right now. You need to figure out that possessing demon._

If only she had any biological samples of the creature itself. She has the scans and samples taken from her and Alec after the incident, which tell a worrying tale: at birth, Shadowhunters receive protections that make them immune to the known forms of demonic possession. Valentine's demon somehow made those protections null and void.

She had thought it was a unique specimen. A second demon implies the modifications to it are repeatable.

And those implications are dire. Of course they are. Which part of their lives is currently _not_ a shitshow of at least average proportions?

Even before the prison transfer order, Alec put an end to any attempts to interrogate Valentine. Izzy did not question his reasons. In the absence of a warlock both ruthless and powerful enough to dig forcibly into the man's mind, they were unlikely to get much more out of him.

Izzy just hopes Jace has the mission handled. Mercifully, Clary takes another assignment with Roseworth's team and goes out for the day.

So, she isn't there when the transport goes sideways.

She is spared the sight of Alec tight-jawed on the phone with Consul Dieudonné, the slam of Jace's door behind him once the strained debrief is finally over, the Institute rumor mill kicking into motion with wild theories of what happened. Valentine is gone. Duncan Armstrong, known throughout the New York Institute as an upstanding, by-the-book officer, vanished with him.

They have basically no leads. The portal was flawless; Magnus came in to make sure of that. All he can say for certain is that his portal did go through Idris's wards, which means Valentine may have landed anywhere within the country. That leaves the Gard troops a wide net to cast.

And Izzy can only email one more Institute about the stupid demon and hope for more solid data.

A dark part of her wishes Alec had bent his integrity enough to find that damned warlock to read Valentine's mind. Very quietly, she thinks, _And Magnus was right there, and he had every reason._

Mind magic is a near-forbidden art. The moral dilemma of cracking open a person's psyche aside, it can wreak equal havoc on the warlock as on the subject. Even if Magnus would, Alec would never let him.

In the privacy of her own head, Izzy takes the thought back.

When she knocks on Clary's door, her last stop before bed, the door is locked. Her texts have gone unanswered.

She does not knock again.

*

Considering the depth of their latest crisis—the most dangerous criminal in the Shadow World, mildly misplaced by the New York Institute!—Izzy should have no time for daydreaming.

The Gard troops are running the search. Consul Dieudonné rebukes Alec's offers of personnel, which leaves Jace pacing like a caged tiger, his frustration at a simmering boil.

Izzy gets it. She just has no cure for his troubles.

Clary is a wraith at breakfast. She barely mumbles good morning in Izzy's direction, picks at her pancakes, and leaves early. Where Jace seethes, she has hardened, a crust of ice on rushing waters.

Her father is on the loose again. The brittle sense of safety she built from his imprisonment has come crumbling down. She's rebuffing all attempts at comfort: Izzy's offer of a hug, whatever quiet words of consolation Alec tries on her before she pushes past him and out of the mess hall.

It feels crass to think of her in any romantic sense. Still, every time Izzy has a moment of tedium, that's where her mind goes.

 _What am I going to say to her? What_ can _I say?_

If Izzy were any of her peers, she'd tell herself to invite her crush for drinks and get them out of her system. She'd do it with a smile and a shrug, a spot of friendly advice. _You have a problem, so do something about it._

As strict as the Clave is about a young nephilim's duty to marry, nobody will stop you from finding your own fun before—or even after, with a political match and an amenable spouse. You need to keep it discreet, and that's the part Izzy's always been bad at. Worse than her brothers, for sure.

Before Magnus, Alec barely talked about his affairs. His love life or lack thereof used to be a mystery wrapped in an enigma locked in a puzzle box. Izzy had her suspicions, but she learned not to heckle him too much.

Jace always had his admirers in the Downworlder bars they managed to sneak into. She rarely saw him with a specific one more than once; like her, he sought an escape. A soap bubble of a moment that would rise, glimmering, and burst into nothing.

Izzy doesn't think she could fuck Clary for the experience and move on. The point where she might have is a receding speck on the horizon.

She recalls Clary's hair against her shoulder, the flow of her hand as she draws a rune, the way she throws her whole body into each pass and block in training. Her brain is a broken record caught on Clary Fairchild: her mouth, her laugh, her warmth, and the knowledge that she asked for time and Clary gave it to her and now it is grinding inexorably on.

"Iz? Earth to Izzy, please respond?"

She starts back in her chair. The computer has blinkered the imaging results behind the screen saver, and she's staring at the dimmed monitor.

"Hey, Alec." She smiles up at him as if she hadn't been a million miles away. "Don't tell me how many times you called my name."

"Five," he says, without a shred of mercy. "Your phone's on silent."

"I'm technically not on call."

"Yeah, so you can get through the research Alicante needs. That research over there?" He gestures at her overflowing lab table.

"Did you need something? Or did you just come down here to give me a hard time?" She tries to sound frothy and ends up a little forlorn.

She realizes her error as Alec frowns. He's finely honed to her tells, and even her singular powers of subterfuge can't always smooth them away.

"Had a question about an old mission. I did try to call you first." He folds himself onto the second lab chair.

"You tried to call me, when you know I've been glued to my email for the last five days?"

His mouth twists in the not-quite-a-smile she used to know as the clearest outward sign of his closely guarded sweetness. It says he's been found out in turn. "Okay. Everything's crazy, Alicante keeps demanding I send them intel I don't have, and Jace is so on edge I feel like there's a beehive in my skull. So I took a walk down the stairs to see you. My one sensible sister."

Izzy cracks. It makes no sense that she would; Alec is only doing the closest thing to asking for reassurance that he'll ever do. She's distracted him from a spiral of self-doubt more than once.

Right now, the idea that she is the sober and judicious party here is too much. Her face drops into her hands as helpless, hysterical laughter shakes her.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm the only sister you have, and I'm so far from a poster girl for cool and collected—oh, god." His stricken expression stoppers her giggles. "Please don't make that face."

It's been a hard twenty-four hours for him, too. His face retreats in severity to the rough level of his initial frown.

"Are you okay?" He scoots closer to put his hand on her knee. She's always loved him for his unthinking capacity for tenderness, even when she kind of resents it. This time, the love wins out, by a vast margin.

"Yeah," she gets out, "and no. You need me to focus and I'm going to pieces, and it's for the dumbest reason in the world, and you'll laugh."

"I won't laugh."

"Well, you should." Could she sound any more pathetic?

"Just tell me."

"I think I'm in love," she says, and miraculously, her voice holds. "I'm in love and I don't know how you fucking _stand it._ I can't stop thinking about it, but I also can't figure it out. I don't know what to say, I don't know what she wants, even when it's perfectly obvious that she's..."

Alec is staring at her with such wide-eyed intensity that it cuts through her tirade.

"You." He enunciates the single syllable. "You're in love. With a girl."

It's not immediately clear which fact he finds more shocking. From his mouth, _in love_ lands with a weight that should leave a crater in the resin floor. It didn't ring so loud, coming from her own.

It almost makes her miss the second part. Which is that she's come out to her very gay brother who, until this spring, kept even her in the dark about his own identity.

 _Identity._ A clinical word for something that seems to obey no reason or rationale. Something you can only feel, but that feeling is irrefutable. Yet Alec buried that part of himself for years, because he thought he was _alone_ , that nobody would take the whole truth of him and still embrace him.

She had her suspicions. He never confirmed them. Even she was too much of a risk.

"I wasn't—" she stammers. "This is a new thing. A last week thing. Totally in progress. I promise I would've told you if I'd known. This. About me."

She did always think the Clave's censure was sanctimonious. She thought herself open-minded and aware, like it couldn't possibly be _that bad_ to love somebody of your own gender, and yet there is a kernel of terror in her heart. She fears for Alec now, a little bit all the time. He's horribly exposed in his new relationship and his new position.

The Clave is not the Angel. There's been a glaring lack of Raziel coming down to smite her brother for his transgressions. The image pulls a stutter of laughter from her throat.

Alec hasn't said anything while all of this rabbits through her mind.

"I let you face it on your own," she says thickly. "I had no fucking idea what it was like. And now I'm twisted up with this—this possibility and it should be a happy thing, but it doesn't fit any of the rules! I don't do _feelings._ I especially don't do feelings for beautiful disaster girls who turn all our lives upside down and—"

She might be crying. Her voice is damp, anyway. She unclenches her trembling fists to check for any traitorous tears, when Alec stands from his seat and hugs her.

"Iz." He rests his cheek against her unraveling bun. His hand is a soothing weight at the small of her back.

Doing an awkward quarter-turn on the chair, she wraps her arms around his middle. "I'm sorry. This wasn't the way I wanted to tell you. Bet it wasn't what you needed on top of this mess."

Alec's laugh is a soft burr of mirth. "I kissed Magnus in front of about forty of our most touchy political rivals, so next to me, you're the soul of discretion."

That's debatable. "I've never been prouder of you than I was then." She sniffs. "Maybe that should've been a clue. Not that I wouldn't have been, anyway."

"Thanks for clarifying." He loosens his hold, checking if she's had enough, and she pushes gently back from him. "Not that you have to, but wanna tell me who it is? This mystery girl?"

The prospect almost sends her into another fit of giggles. She really should have planned this. Like, even ten seconds into the future.

"I do," she says, "but you might not wanna hear it."

"I literally asked." He hikes himself back onto his chair, lanky legs bent at the knees. There's a tint of hope to him that makes her heart ache—he's probably not that keen to hear about the object of her affections, but she has opened a door between them that he didn't even know existed.

She savors the look on his face for a precious three seconds and says, "It's your least favourite shadowhunting prodigy in the Institute."

She watches that sink in. He sinks against the back of the chair. Seconds pass, treacle-slow, as his expression journeys from surprise to comprehension, takes a brief break somewhere close to dismay, and ends up with one brow raised at her. "Clary Fairchild. What is it about her?"

"Wow." She braces on the table edge so she can tip herself dramatically backward. "I can really feel the sympathy. It's not like I have a serious romantic dilemma here."

"No, I—" Alec gestures. "You can't deny there's a bit of a pattern! First Jace goes off all rails for her, and..."

" _Et tu_ , Isabelle, huh?" She gives him a touch of stink-eye. Just a tad. "I didn't decide this, Alec. You think I didn't consider the possibility that I just had a girl crush? Plus, two people aren't a statistically significant pattern."

"Fine. Sorry for questioning your taste in girls." He bites the corner of his lip, a nervous tic. It's better than worrying his hands, which sit still between his knees. "Does she know you, uh, have a thing for her?"

"She made a move on me." Her eyes drift to the flickering screen-saver. "She knows. I asked for some time, because of—you know, _everything_ —and now we've lost her genocidal father and somehow there hasn't been a good moment to revisit that topic."

"That sounds familiar." Alec's bearing softens, like it will when his thoughts turn toward Magnus. "It's like I have to hack time out of my day to _have_ a relationship. Nobody tells you that part up front."

"I'm a microscopic bit glad to hear it hasn't been all sunshine and roses." She demonstrates a minuscule distance between her thumb and forefinger. "Only because you're so disgustingly happy ninety-eight per cent of the time! Like, it's good to know you're still human."

His cheeks look warm. In a rare few respects, he'll never be anything but easy.

"I want you to be happy, too," he says. "I don't actually dislike her. Not anymore. So, if that's what you want, I'm not gonna stop you."

Izzy loosens her hands again, uncurls the fingers one by one. She's developed a bad habit of fisting them to keep them still. "I think it is what I want. She is."

Her heart lifts as if she'd launched off a cliff, only the whistling rush of the fall in her ears, gravity still a fraction behind. Alec smiles at her, slight and gentle, full of wordless approval.

Then her phone buzzes on the table, flashing red with a priority alert. Alec jumps in his seat, an identical message on his screen as he frees his own phone from a thigh pocket.

_Unknown energy discharge. Location: north wing, library area._

The Institute's wards are extensive, but they can't cover every eventuality. This high-clearance alert code indicates something so out of the ordinary that neither the magical nor technological systems can identify it.

"Jace was in the library, before I came here," Alec says. "He was working on something with Clary. I thought it'd keep 'em both busy and indoors, but what the hell—?"

Izzy grabs her phone with one hand, Alec's sleeve with the other, and tows him toward the door.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where credit is due: the "Context is for queens" line is taken (with a small but important modification) from the _Star Trek Discovery_ episode "Context Is For Kings", because it sounded like the kind of thing Izzy would say.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to find me on social media, I am on:
> 
> tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen) and my fic hashtag is #junefic
> 
> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
